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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Unsuspecting Bones

I'm way behind on Leah's prompts. Such is, life is, and so it is that I'm smooshing some together today because I want to. So here are the three (including the picture) that brought this little thing about:

Write a scene
that takes place in a rose garden at night.

Write about what happened when she least expected it. Use the
word “hen.”

Winnie stared down the gravel path and thought, Now, who could have opened the rose garden gate?

Listening into the night, she moved silently through the
fog. She paused at the gate, resting her fingertips on the cold iron. The rusted
hinges hadn’t been moved in years.

She was slight enough to slip sideways through the bars—wartime
would do that, turn a person to bone—and she was want to do so as often as she
could. Roses continued to smell heady no matter who fought or why.

A rustle in the hedges made her clutch the gate more firmly.
She ought to back out slowly. Ought to head back to the old manor house. What
was left of it. War would turn a home to bone as well.

“Please, miss.” A voice called from the darkness, cracked and
dry. “Have you something to eat? A hen or some oats. Water.”

Leaning forward, as if that would help Winnie see into the
wild growth of the garden, she replied, “Who’s there?”

She snapped her hand from the gate and stumbled back
as a man stepped hesitantly out of the shadows. His shoulders slumped, his face
was covered in a ragged beard, and the point of his riffle dragged on the
ground behind him.

His uniform was the wrong cut, the wrong color. He wouldn’t
meet her eyes.